California History & Geography

Webquest: California Travel

Yosemite

You and two others have just been hired by a travel agency that specializes in California.

You have been asked to use Microsoft Publisher to make a brochure for tours the company offers.

 You have been asked to plan seven (7) day long tours of the state for the following people:

  • a family with two children that likes to camp. They will be driving their own car
  • a retired couple that likes to stay in nice hotels. They want to fly to each place and rent a car
  • a 45 year old single person who likes art and music. She will be using planes, trains, buses, and other public transportation to get around

Choose one of these clients for your tour.

 

To get you started, you need to learn about the state and what is available.You want to show the people the different areas of the state. Choose two from the following regions (North, Central, or South).

South

  • Southern Caliifornia
    • Los Angeles
    • San Diego
    • Inland Empire

Central

  • Central Coast
  • Central Valley

Northern

  • San Francisco Bay Area
  • North Coast
  • Mountains
    • Shasta Cascade
    • High Sierra
    • Mother Lode
  • Desert

Day 1- Explore the regions using the websites that are in this story about California travel. Write an e-mail to your teacher and tell her why you chose those two regions for your tour.

Day 2- Decide which places the people will visit, how they will get there, where they will eat and where they will stay. Use Excel to keep track of costs. E-Mail your teacher the Excel spreadsheet with the cost as an attachment. Here is a link to travel websites to help you plan your itineraries

Day 3- Use Google Maps to plan the time for the itinerary. Send the link to your teacher. (You will have to get a GMail account if you don't have one so that you can save the map to My Maps). For help on how to do this, use the Google My Maps tutorial

Day 4- Make your brochure. Show it to your teacher for proofreading. After you make corrections, hand it out.

Challenges: If you find you have extra time, you can:

  • Make a tour using Google Earth
  • Add destinations
  • Make a tour for a  client that you "invent"

 

 

 

Travel Webquests

Play the Transportation Game

Play the Transportation Game on the Sacramento History Online website.  The teacher should give you the worksheet, but if you don't have it, it's attached below.

Spelling & Vocabulary- California Geography

 

California has many regions.

The Sacramento delta has rich farmland.

The Gold Rush was very important to California’s future.

Where did they discover gold?

June 26 we will go to Empire Mine.

Grass Valley is a foothill town.

The gold discovery caused California to develop.

Sutter’s Fort is a historic site.

The Napa Valley is an important wine region.

There are some large dairy farms in California.

The agricultural economy is important to California.

 A rancher raises cattle.

John Sutter was a German immigrant.

The Sacramento River delta is shaped like delta, a letter in the Greek alphabet.

A canal is a narrow channel that carries water.

 Levees protect towns and cities from floods.

 There are small islands in the delta that people go to for recreation

He is a descendant of the first Chinese that came to California.

 

 

Gold Mining in California

Columbia State Park offers these resources for teaching about gold mining.

Click on the link to go to the site, or click on the attachment to download it from this site. The attachment will open in the appropriate program.

Gold Mining Techniques- PowerPoint Show

Script for PowerPoint

Mining Techniques Worksheet - A bit challenging for most adult ESL students, this might work as a group effort

Mining terms crossword

Crossword answers

Sutter's Fort PowerPoint

Here's a PowerPoint about Sutter's Fort. Click and open the attachment to view it.

California History Field Trip Sites

Here are some websites that you can use to familiarize yourself and your students with the three state parks/museums that we are going to be going to:

Sutter's Fort & Capitol Museum- Friday, June 20

Sutter's Fort

Capitol Museum

Empire Mine State Park- Thursday, June 26

Empire Mine State Park

California State Railroad Museum - Wednesday, July 9

 

 

 

California Resources

Here are links that may be helpful for our summer themes:

Online Archive of California- a collection of papers, photos, and other documents, and links to other collections

California Online Resources in Education- 4th Grade California History

Sacramento History Online- Includes a couple of videos, two "games", photos, lesson plans, and documents

Sacramento History links- Links to museums and archives

 

Syndicate content